Part 176: Hinnom - Turn 68

Turn 68

The build up rolls on.  The quieter these turns are for me, the better.  The second leg of trading with Mictlan continues, 60 slaves for elemental armor, a fire brand and a shield of gleaming gold.   

Research in alteration rolls on as does my new assembly line production of mechanical men (five casts = 50 miniature mechanical giants).  Blood hunting soars to 140 when HEMOPHELIA: ULTIMATE COCKBLOCK finds a freshman LAN party and "invites" them back to his place for some demon summoning.  

Finally, Mary Schapiro sends me a message.  



How considerate! How kind!  


How...  Hold on just a minute!


What are you doing Mary Schapiro? That is my global!   A little bit of metagame analysis here:  irony or death knows that I desperately want to kill Mictlan before he and Schneeble (probably) dogpile me.   Further, he knows that I am busily churning out gemgens from my construction site.  I don't think he knows about my blood site but I'm not sure.  But, because I'm being unreasonably transparent about my forging, he also knows I can only make 5-6 blood stones a turn.  With every Pan able to make a blood stone with the help of some boosters a really concerted effort could allow him to overtake me.  So I think he's banking on me being willing to trade this global and its 20 E gems a turn for continued peace and then is going to use the E gems to make tons of blood stones or save up for forge of the ancients which he will way overcast and use to forge a ton of blood stones and clams.  I, on the other hand, am banking on being able to continue to outpace him in blood stone production, even with his extra 20 E gems a turn and to use these turns of peace to really build up my research lead, exploit my blood site and build a huge army of dudes to smash everything.  This is one of the more interesting dynamics currently in play. Follow along to see how it works out in future turns!


Alteration 6 complete and just a bit more to 7!


Alt 6 has quite a few spells I really like.


This spell is bad, but it is still awesome.  A bunch of piggy juggernauts roaming the battlefield, running away at the first sign of trouble.  


False horrors still have the same fear effect as regular horrors and they are easily spammable by nations with plentiful air mages.  It's a nasty strategy that relies on one of my very favorite mechanics:  fear stacking.  Flood the battlefield with false horrors and watch the enemy run away.  


We've seen frozen heart in action before.  TheDemon's pretender used it to kill PIMP ROBES and a couple of mages spamming frozen heart is a great Zmey defense force.  


This is a great spell for fighting high prot troops.  It destroys their armor, leaving you free to rain death down on them (ex. If you have a bunch of lightly armored archers and they have a bunch of heavy cavalry).


Here we have one of the best spells in the game.  If it hits you and you fail your MR check then you die.  But lots of stuff now has relatively high magic resistance.  What makes this so good is that if even if the target passes their MR check they still get paralyzed!   You can see how a couple mages casting petrify would just absolutely ruin any SCs day.  "Oh hey, you look super burly with absurd magic resistance. Excuse me while I immobilize you for 20 turns while my compatriots beat on you." This is just a great spell. 


This spell is stupid and for babbies.  It lets you control a magic being. Like a mechanical giant that has terrible magic resistance.  It's basically opposition but you get to keep the magic being and is the Achilles heel of all these mechanical giants I've been making.  


This handy spell provides luck for five squares of your guys.  Great for making small groups of thugs or elite units more difficult to kill.


Soul Vortex is one of those spells that seems like you should always cast it but ends up being far more situational.  It drains life from everyone alive (friend or foe, but no lifeless beings) around the caster every turn.  That's great but it comes with fatigue 40 and if you're casting this and anything else with, say, just D3, then you're rapidly approaching a point where fatigue is going to get your SC killed.  


Darkness is great and you've seen TheDemon use it to nice effect.  It really comes into its own when you have big armies of undead or demons fighting regular armies and you can leverage the reduced atk/def across the board in large numbers. It's basically a requirement for every blood nation in midgame on to bring a darkness caster along with their demon armies.  


Look, our first dome!  Incy has cast frost dome on Mictlan (which is what lookit dis beard was targetting) and it does enough damage to kill a human mage but nowhere near enough to kill a Ba'al. 


MOAR KRAKEN casts Three Red Seconds and before he can count to four a huge mass of imps erects a dark citadel to protect my blood site in Old Man Mountains. Now both of my discount sites have forts and it will be extremely difficult to remove me from either.  Although, to negate the blood site you really only need to stop my blood hunting. That's one serious advantage the construction site has: it will continue to be useful until someone actually storms the  castle.  


Dark Citadels are badass.  


Incy has assembled a force across the river.  Is he heading north into Pan or East into Hinnom?  


I'm concerned about The Weald because Schneeble seems to be massing banes and keeping his King of Fire and its attendant elemental children there.   There's really only one player he can attack from there and I'll give you a hint: he's the good guy!


In Histyra, still fuck the ocean the Iron Dragon and Zmeywaffe Competitor the Zmey head into Mictlan to spread the glorious word of King Hippomnomnomnom.  Forging of blood stones continues to be a drain on my supply of slaves and I forge a number of interesting artifacts.   




This would be so great if only being a troll weren't a serious step down from Melqart or Ba'al.  For human nations this item can be a god send and I believe you can use it to turn your pretender into a troll.  Unlike the lycanthrope amulet which rarely works, the Pebble Skin Suit is quite effective at transforming its wearer. 


I reforge Azazel's mirror.  It allows the user to reach out across the world and snuff out enemy commanders.  


This is the gold standard SC armor.  Accept no substitutes.  It provides reinvigoration and magic resistance. KRAKEN QUEEN was named after the Faerie Queens which players spend 40 nature gems summoning just so they can forge this stuff. 


running out of kraken names casts Contact Naiad. Naiad's get water and nature magic and this one will be on clam forging duty.  King Hippomnomnomnom just read Too Big To Fail and wants to diversify, lest a blood stone bubble ruin him.  


Antrax heads West on a secret mission.  That's the Robe of Callius the Druid which provides 50% resistance to all the elements and water breathing.  


Underwater, a kraken forges Ember.  Now that irony or death has hit artifacts, I'm picking up all the remaining artifacts that are left that I might want as fast as I can.   


And that's all that happened this turn!   Nothing else to see here.   Have a good night ladies and gents!  Wait, what's this?  


Interlude

Many years ago...


Dad!


You got that thing running yet buddy?


Nah, but I got your tools all set!


Let's see if we can get this thing started, OK?


But I thought we needed a new ziggurat full of slaves?


Well, maybe we don't.  Come on, slide behind the wheel. Let's use some gems to fire this thing up.  What's the matter? Go ahead!


It's stupid.  Without the slaves it's not going to work.


Hope is never stupid. You've got to believe good events will happen and then they will. You understand what I'm saying? In this world, you've got to take luck scales.  Alright, come on.  


Well, what do you want to fix today?


We're going to have to put that on hold for a little while because, um, I've got to go to the Inferno with your brothers.  You know, we've got some work out there with the Pantokrator.  


What about the road trip?


The Void will still be there when we get back little dude.  Hey, I've got something for you.


Um, I'm not supposed to, mom says.


Live a little Hippomnomnomnom.  It's just a candy bar.  Alright, I'll be back before you know it. Hold down the fort.  You're my man?  Alright.








Dad?  It's time to come home.  



King Hippomnomnomnom's father wastes no time in calling in favors for his son. 


Even without backup, Semyaza is quite the SC!  In the vanilla game the Grigori are the most badass chassis around.  In Awesome Endgame they're a bit light on hp for the cost but otherwise quite good.  Flying, stealthy, mind hunt immune (although magic duel vulnerable), they are immune to fire and lightning, cause fear, have blood vengeance (magic resistance check whenever they're damaged, if attacker fails the damage rebounds) and corruption which is seduction that works on men and women.  Semyaza is also a healer (100) and comes with S4N4B5.   


You might wonder why I'm not summoning another Grigori right away and the answer is that Incy/Mictlan can also summon demon lords and the demon lords are unique. He cannot summon Grigori.  So I'm going to summon all four demon lords (I hope) and then return to summoning Semyaza's brothers.